


The Chronomaker and the Findsman

by Findswoman



Series: The Gand Series [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gand - Freeform, Gand Findsman, Gen, watchmaker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24664369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Findswoman/pseuds/Findswoman
Summary: “Though that chronomaker had certainly not needed a Findsman to recover his long-tipped pliers from his waste-flimsi receptacle, for fog’s sake” (The Book of Gand,chapter 11). Except he really kind of did—except not in the way one might expect.
Series: The Gand Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783291
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	The Chronomaker and the Findsman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp/gifts).



> Originally written and posted in August 2015 at JCF Fanfic for the [OC Revolution Summer 2015 challenge](https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-oc-revolution-two-spring-2020-challenges-posted-voting-time-6-9-p-53-1310.50004117/#post-50060902). Riffs on a parenthetical comment from my very first fanfic story, _The Book of Gand_ (see summary), though you don't need to read that story in order to understand this one. Also greatly inspired by Beatrix Potter's _The Tailor of Gloucester,_ some of whose style elements it consciously borrows, and offered in gratitude to Kahara_the_Ghostly_Galoomp for her help beta-reading _The Book of Gand._ For beta -reading this story, I thak Ewok_Poet.

In N’xid, the smallest and humblest of the pocket colonies that loom from the mists of Gand, there lived a chronomaker of the Breather subspecies.  
  
All day, and most of the evening, he would sit in the window of his shop in the central street of N’xid, crafting and repairing timepieces of all every description—from the tiniest, quietest watch for a Findsman’s pocket to the stateliest chiming cabinet-chrono for an industrialist’s drawing room.  
  
But although his craftsmanship was of the finest quality, although he built his timepieces from the choicest metals and crystals and finest precision parts, he was aged and in poor health. Several facets of his compound eyes—particularly around the edges—had gone dim from constant squinting. And he was poor.  
  
Before him on his workbench lay the parts for an exquisite pocketwatch. The case was of platinum, inlaid with corusca gems and a family emblem; the movement was an intricate filigree of miniature cogs and wheels and coils; and at its heart was an oscillator driven by a single, crimson-glowing dragite crystal, mined from the depths of the Surface of Gand. It was for Semfod Sylonn, governor of the pocket colony of N’xid, in honor of his recent attainment of the honor of _janwuine._  
  
It would be the most beautiful timepiece ever created by this poor chronomaker of N’xid, and it would earn him his fortune—perhaps also his name.  
  
He had handcrafted each of its parts, one by one; it was his claws and his tools that had set each corsuca gem into the platinum case, lined up each cog with its neighbor, placed the dragite crystal between the tendril-thin tines of the resonator fork. And now it was time to put all the parts together, one by one.  
  
But one of the tools he needed was missing: his long-tipped pliers. He needed them for joining the pieces of the movement one to another and for soldering the movement in place inside the case. If he used any other tool, the radius of the connecting links would be incorrect, and friction would build inside the mechanism.  
  
The chronomaker rummaged anxiously through the gears, springs, balance wheels, bezels, hand tools, and power cells that besprinkled his workspace, as countless as the droplets that formed the evening mists. As he did, he clacked his mandibles worriedly and murmured to himself as he was wont to do.  
  
“Size-triple-zero cogs, springs smaller than a clawtip . . . how can this Gand possibly connect one to the other with nothing but his chunky claws? The flat-nosed pliers are too short, the toothed grippers will leave scratches . . .”  
  
He looked in the drawer where he usually stored his hand tools—nothing. He looked on the shelf near the soldering apparatus in case he had left it there—nothing. Or perhaps it somehow had ended up in the cabinet where the lathe was kept? Well, the mid-size wire cutters were there—Mists only knew why. But not the long-tipped pliers. The chronomaker clacked and murmured some more.  
  
“O Sacred Visionary Mists! Today is the middle day of the Warm Season, and the governor’s secretary will be coming by early this evening . . . and shall Governor Semfod Sylonn be without his jeweled pocket-chrono on the day of his _janwuine-jika?_ ”  
  
It was at times like these that the chronomaker wished he had been gifted with the talent of the Mists, the talent of the Findsman. No one else but a Findsman stood any chance of recovering anything in this untidy fog-pit of a chronoshop. There was only one member of his family who had ever that talent: a second cousin (or was he a third cousin? he couldn’t remember) by the name of Vennlok Ssympk. And he had seen this cousin at work a few times before . . .  
  
“Now, what does Cousin Vennlok do when he’s hunting for something? . . . Oh yes. First the incense lamp.” He took one from his shelf. “Gand only has this little tiny one, but it should do . . .”  
  
He lit it and set it on the floor. After a few moments wisps of green smoke began to curl upward.  
  
“And then he usually sits and closes his eyes for a while . . . somewhere comfortable . . .” He looked around. “The workbench won’t do . . . maybe here . . .”  
  
Along the back wall of the shop, between a cabinet-chrono that had just gotten new foam pads and another that needed new foam pads, there was a space just big enough to hold an average-sized adult Gand. The chronomaker’s aging exoskeleton creaked as he squeezed himself in, lowered himself to the floor, and sat.  
  
And closed his eyes.  
  
And sat.  
  
And sat.  
  
Minutes passed, maybe hours. Everything remained dark before the chronomaker’s eyes. No swirling mists had formed in the eye of his intuition (or whatever it was Vennlok used to say) to lead him with their intricate patterns toward the missing tool. He saw nothing but the dark inside of his own nictitating membranes.  
  
He was just thinking of what he might try next—“Sometimes he chants things, doesn’t he? Or holds up his hands in fancy ways?”—when a gruff voice intruded on his thoughts.  
  
“ _There_ you are! Gand feared you had closed! If you could kindly take a look at this—”  
  
The chronomaker’s eyes popped open to see a large, purple-chitined male looming over him, thrusting a non-platinum, non-jewel-inlaid pocketwatch in his face and blathering something about smashed crystals and corroded power cells. The words washed over him almost like mists—though not mists that showed any signs of parting to reveal his missing pliers.  
  
Even so, the chronomaker found himself jumping to his feet, taking the watch, and saying something like, “Yes, by all means, honored citizen. Gand shall tend to it immediately.” The citizen thanked him, saluted, and left.  
  
Clacking his outermost mandibles in resignation and embarrassment, the chronomaker made his way back to his workbench. This was not working. He set down the citizen’s ordinary chrono and eyed the pieces of the governor’s ornate one.  
  
“Mother and Father and Master Tergloss were right all along . . . some things on Gand just can’t be grasped by a lowly Secular . . .” He glanced at one of the many timepieces up on his shelf. “And meanwhile—O dear Mists!—it is only an hour before the governor’s secretary comes . . . and Gand has no pocketwatch to show him, only some gears and two halves of a case . . .  
  
“But wait! What is this Gand sees out his window, that comes like a column of light piercing the fog?”  
  
This was, of course, a bit of an exaggeration, for what the chronomaker saw coming was really more like a column of dark-brown robes piercing the neutral-colored monotony of the other townsfolk’s tunics. It was a Findsman, walking along the cobbled street past the shop. It was not Vennlok Ssympk, but someone much younger, likely an apprentice—a well-looking youth, with bright silver eyes.  
  
The chronomaker ran out onto the street and grabbed this wondrous apparition by a capacious brown sleeve.  
  
“Oh, Your Mystical Honor, this Gand begs you to help him! His long-tipped pliers are missing, and without them he cannot finish the pocket-chrono for Governor Semfod Sylonn . . .” If the Findsman’s mouthparts ground slightly at the sound of this name, the chronomaker did not notice it. “Please, Gand begs you . . . please help him find them!”  
  
“By all means, honored citizen, with the Mists’ help,” the Findsman replied, and followed the chronomaker into the shop.  
  
The chronomaker watched as his visitor looked intently about, taking in every detail of every object that sat on every shelf and listening to every tick and whir. He watched as the Findsman seated himself at the workbench and looked over the parts of the governor’s watch laid out neatly before him. He wondered what the youth meant by placing his hands gently on the tools lying off to one side of the workbench, then on the handle of one tool drawer, then on the handle of the other.  
  
But as the young Findsman hunched over the bench, squinted, turned to face the supply cabinet, and then turned back to the bench, it all became clear: he was placing himself in the same physical postures and attitudes that the chronomaker would be likely to assume his work.  
  
Then the Findsman looked under the workbench, scanning the floor beneath it. There was nothing on the floor besides a few stray, broken bits of wire and a half-full waste-flimsi receptacle that sat directly below the tool drawers. This he peered into, then reached into, then rummaged through. After a few moments he held up a pair of long-tipped pliers with a rubberized handle.  
  
“Here they are, honored citizen.”  
  
“By the Holy Madman’s cloak . . .” The chronomaker’s mouth popped fully open. “You mean they had fallen into the—”  
  
“Yes.” He handed the tool to the chronomaker, who still stood agape. “Take and use them in good health, and may the Mists show you the way.”  
  
With that, before the chronomaker could say anything, he bowed slightly and took his leave, fading off into the evening mists as he walked away down the street.

**Author's Note:**

> Semfod Sylonn and N’xid are both original and first mentioned in chapter 9 of _The Book of Gand._
> 
> Although I did do a bit of Internet research on watchmaking in the course of writing this story, both by browsing watchmaking supply catalogs and consulting Wikipedia’s quartz watch entry, some of the watchmaker talk is basically just Treknobabble (well, technically Warsnobabble, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it ;) ).
> 
> Two of the names mentioned in the story are homages to _The Tailor of Gloucester:_ Tergloss and Vennlok Ssympk, the latter being named for the tailor’s cat, Simpkin.
> 
> If you have read _The Book of Gand_ at least through chapter 11, you will likely recognize the young Findsman in this story, and you’ll know why he snarls at the mention of the governor. Neither piece of knowledge is absolutely essential for understanding the story, however.
> 
> “May the Mists show you the way” is given as Zuckuss’s characteristic quote in one of the West End Games guides, though I can no longer remember which one. I understand it as a familiar Findsman’s greeting and/or blessing.


End file.
